Males on Steepster?

I’m just curious – how many males actually use steepster? The gender ratio is tipped greatly towards the female persuasion, and I know there are some guys out there, but sometimes I feel like I’m the only one.

Haha, I was thinking the same thing myself! From our past research and our tea survey we did several months ago, the gender breakdown was actually quite even. But I have to admit there do seem to be many intelligent, beautiful, compassionate, and all around amazing women on Steepster now! :)

I’ve also heard that a majority of tea drinkers (at least in the US) are female – so maybe that has something to do with it. All of your Steepster overlords (Jack, Mike, and myself) are dudes, but we welcome any and all kinds to the tea drinking fun at Steepster.

From what I’ve noticed here, Sweet Tea is pre-sweetened before it reaches your table. Unsweet Tea is not sweetened before it reaches you. People then either add sugar or splenda or leave it plain as their personal tastes dictate. It confused me too when I first saw people sweetening their “unsweet” tea. (Actually the whole idea of calling regular tea “unsweet” seemed odd to me.)

@Carolyn. EXACTLY! That’s the beef I have w/ places like SBUX. They have iced and hot tea on the menu and then ask if I want it sweetend (Thank GOD they now ask before doing it automatically)… I give them a really stupid look (on purpose lol) and am like “Um… no… I ordered tea… not sweet tea…”. I grabbed a bottle of Tazo Organic Green Tea at an airport once, took a sip, and nearly gagged. Cane sugar was in fine print in the ingredients but it was NOT labled as “Sweet tea”. I’ve been meaning to write them an email accusing them of false advertisment. I may do that today. Thanks for reminding me.:)

Re: sweet vs. “unsweet”: Tea in the South is always iced and always sweetened heavily, unless the person ordering specifies something different. Tea has to be sweetened hot, and then chilled, to produce the supersaturated solution known as “tea” here. If you don’t want your teeth to fall out, or to lapse into a diabetic coma, then you order your tea “unsweet,” and add sugar or the other sweetener of your choice. This, by the way, automatically identifies you as Someone Not From Here.

@Cofftea LOL Carolyn has it right. We are in Charleston, SC so when you order iced tea you have to say sweet or unsweet tea. Totally a southern thing :) The funny thing is that when my husband goes out of town for business he has to remember to just say iced tea, because if you ask for “unsweet” the waiter looks at you like your crazy! Sweet tea is big here, as a matter of fact McDonald’s advertises in the store their “awesome” sweet tea, lol

Thanks, rabbysmom. That is what I was trying to say. This is a regional linguistic difference and nothing to get excited about. Just across the border into Mississippi many restaurants only serve Tea and Unsweet Tea. It came as quite a surprise to me when I first moved here that “Tea” meant sweetened by default. It is definitely a Southern thing.

@Cofftea Regarding Midwestern restaurants serving sweetened tea, my guess is that either the parent company is based in the South (and therefore their recipes and terminology is as well) or it is peculiar to that restaurant. Or the South is creeping into the MIdwest. I can tell you that when I lived in Ohio and Colorado I had never heard of Unsweet tea.

@Carolyn, I’m not sure I beleive the thing about the location of the parent co. because it’s that way nearly everywhere except Subway. We don’t call it unsweet tea here, just iced tea. But it’s more often than not sweetened before it gets to you. That’s what ticks me off and is something to be excited about because they’re 2 different products and they try to pass one off as the other.

But seriously, many of these posts and replies don’t really pertain to the topic. They would be much better in their own “Sweet tea/Unsweet tea” discussion so others could actually find them. Maybe one of the lovely ladies can do us the honor of creating such a discussion? ;)

@rabbysmom: It’s ok, it happens :) It just makes sense for the sweet/unsweet tea to be in its own discussion since I’m sure a number of people would like to contribute…and they probably won’t find posts about that in the “manliest” Steepster discussion.

@Ricky: Good call…we’ll just have to build that first. I’ll do another post in here about people moving their conversation.

It’s interesting, but in fact tea has historically (at least in the western world) been a woman’s drink. They were the ones who populated the posh ‘tea salons’ and it’s even said that these all-female gatherings helped women organize and became the foundation of the women’s lib movement.

Coffee (usually black and strong enough to put hair on your chest if it wasn’t there before) on the other hand, has traditionally been seen as ‘The Drink of the He-man’ (it’s also one of the few drinks guaranteed to make me puke – I wonder what that says about you guys ;P).

Of course these are both old stereotypes and now there are lots of women who drink coffee (ew) and lots of men who drink tea. I’m still trying to recruit the boyfriend-creature, though unfortunately he’s of the opinion that, coffee or tea, if it doesn’t have a ton of sugar in it, then it’s no good. Men!
;)

I’m not only a member of the dangling persuasion, but I started a tea business. The one consolation to my (apparently) effeminate career choice: When I have told my manpals about owning a tea bar, they frequently do not hear me correctly and assume I said _ _ _ – ty bar which seems to impress them quite a bit. Sometimes I correct them.

Then there’s “Oriental Beauty”, “Lady Grey”, “Jazmine Pearl”, “Aly Shan”…
“Titsubin”, “Brown Betty”,
If you want a private room with a girl, you come talk to me because I’m the “matcha maker”
The puns just write themselves.

I’m sure I could put a novel (or at least a story) together on that…
Honestly, not too far from the kind of stuff I usually write XD
But, seeing as my style and tastes go, it would probably be more along the lines of light-hearted, mundane fiction. Or straight out erotica. Or a tasteful coupling of the two. Even if I put in a murder, it would still be pleasantly mundane XD

Oh… you’d be surprised about the Erotica. As long as it doesn’t get smutty. Hehe.
Maybe I’ll get to work on that after I finish the piece I just started that’s based vaguely on a Chinese waitress that I’m kinda in love with.